Taeyeon in the Sky

SM Entertainment

To truly appreciate the sonic beauty of Taeyeon’s single “INVU”, I recommend listening to it in the air. 

This was my experience over the weekend as I flew to Chicago, with the title track of the singer’s latest album, breezing into my noise-canceling headphones like the air under the plane’s wings. “INVU '' built as we ascended higher into the sky, first consumed by the patchy gray clouds, and then suddenly as we soared over them. Suddenly the magic of Teayeon’s voice came to me as I saw the clouds float past my window seat. “INVU” is a song that is built on the fantastic and the extraordinary.

Taeyeon knew she wanted the song the moment she heard it. “As soon as I heard the song, I thought, ‘This is it,’” she recalled while she promoted her album of the same name in February of this year. “But in fact, it wasn’t the song chosen when I had a meeting with my staff.” Everyone on Taeyeon’s team voted “no” for “INVU”, except Taeyeon herself. 

“It was a bit of a risky situation,” she said of her insistence to back the song. If it failed, this would be on her. “But I was confident. I had a feeling and I was going to convince everyone [to choose this song].” 

To persuade SM staff that this should be the single, Taeyeon decided to act out the song’s emotions of longing while she performed it. “I sang while I acted to express the song a little better,” she explained. “I tried to express the emotions a little more deeply.” She especially wanted to show how the vocals could be dramatic and beautiful; that this song’s emotions could climb into something heavenly, just like the nose of my aircraft. 

And she was right: “INVU” soars, particularly as it reaches the chorus. It requests that you move and that your heart become pierced by her beautifully rich voice. 

SM Entertainment

When she was a teenager, there was a pluckiness to Kim Taeyeon. She remembers herself as a kid who was quiet and often didn’t care to stand out. “I wasn’t a fun kid,” she told Nylon this year. “It was always school, home, school, home. I was more excited and outgoing when it came to music rather than studying.” As a teenager, she often felt like one of the boys. She’d banter and bicker with her male co-hosts on her radio show Taeyeon ChinChin Radio (“chinchin”, short for “chningu”, is Korean for “Friend”). When guests like SHINee would show up to promote their debut album “Replay” she would have a laugh as she guided them through games to win the title of her “best friend”.

She was the chosen leader of Girls Generation because she was the oldest, but this title made her uncomfortable. Taeyeon often kept her feelings to herself and never felt like the word “leader” described her. After all, the girls were the same age in Girls Generation. She felt silly bossing them around. 

At one point, she admitted, “I thought, ‘I haven’t done anything to be a good leader to these girls.’” She kept these thoughts of inadequacy to herself until the girls confronted her about it. As she remembered it, “The girls misinterpreted it.” So she told the members, “Let’s just not have anything like a leader.” 

Taeyeon’s inability to stand up for herself was ingrained into her personality, she said. She had a hard time being decisive and speaking up. But as she grew older, a personality trait that looked like indecision became something closer to indifference to your opinion of her. She didn’t care what you thought of her, but you would respect her. This became clear in 2016 when the rapper Wiz Khalifa alleged that Taeyeon canceled a rehearsal with him at the last minute to go to the hospital. In response, Taeyeon posted to her story, “I didn’t go to the hospital, buddy. I’m washing up after waiting for you.” In the video she uploaded to Instagram, she wore a Pink Panther eye mask, pushed to her brow line. Yes, she would look cute as she called you out; no, you would not lie on her. 

These parts of Taeyeon’s personality feel important to name because as her confidence grew, so did her style. Like her friend Key of SHINee, Taeyeon became drawn to bold, exquisite designers who could help her cultivate an edgy, sophisticated look. Suddenly, Taeyeon’s opulence and daring fashion style found it’s way into her music, too. 

For years, Taeyeon’s songs reflected an “everygirl” persona: the ingenue who learned her worth and self-love in “Dear Me” or the heartbroken lover who finally speaks up for herself in “Fine”. The best songs, such as “I”, allow her voice to crush the melody and for us to breathe in her pain or yearning. When she nearly shouts the opening lines of “I”, “Sky that pours the light/ I stand under it as if I’m dreaming,” I wonder what secrets she’s holding. 

By the time Taeyeon released “INVU”, she had transitioned into a demigod in K-Pop. Her 2021 single “Weekend” was one of the most popular songs of the year, and the video, full of high gloss aesthetics in a candy coated universe, reminded us that Taeyeon the Artist exists in her own stratosphere. 

This rise did not happen by chance. Throughout her career, Taeyeon’s become more confident in her artistry. “I feel myself becoming a stronger artist as I release more albums,” she said in the Nylon interview. “I can also see my career building up more clearly, and it drives me to try something new and different for the next release.”

She’s described the past fifteen years of her career as “a journey of self-discovery” and one where she’s often “traveled alone.” Throughout the last decade, she’s learned how to advocate for herself and be her own biggest fan. No one, she’s learned, is going to look out for you like yourself. Even if, as she told Paper, "There were many moments in my life when I felt timid or hid myself in certain situations," she said. Yet perhaps what sets 33-year-old Taeyeon apart from the teenager who hid behind the members of Girls Generation is that she walks through her fear. 

I believe this bravery is why “INVU” feels like Taeyeon’s most complete body of work. This is the first album that has allowed Taeyeon to be multiple archetypes at once, because this is what we learn about ourselves as we grow older: We evolve; we are never linear in the version of ourselves we believe is true. Taeyeon feels fully herself, fully human, in this body of work because she is allowed to be multiple women at once. The album is haunting and sensual in tracks like “Siren” before it switches to a quiet rage with “Set Myself on Fire” or “Cold As Hell.” Taeyeon still requests that you don’t mess with her, but she’s also willing to express her vulnerability. 

“I try my best to be good at [expressing emotions] and to capture them in my music,” she says. “Truthfully, I am still in the process of getting better, because it’s not something that happens overnight. The more honest you want to be, the more cautious you become. This is only natural.”

Taeyeon also hopes that listeners can understand that she is evolving and changing. "I want people to recognize the emotions of a 33-year-old Taeyeon," she told PAPER earlier this year. "I hope [they] can focus on the 'current Taeyeon as she is."

Nearly seven months after its release, I still find more to feel awestruck by “INVU”. Taeyeon’s album is a force. As we rode 25,000 feet above land, I thought how right here, in this airspace, was one of the few places that can hold the beauty of Taeyeon’s art. On that evening flight, Taeyeon’s voice pierced the sky and transformed it to new shades of orange, pink and red, like a painting brought to life.